-- THE ARCHIVE --

UNITED STATES
School CP - June 2011

The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, 1 June 2011

St. Aug alumni sue consultant in paddling controversy

By Bruce NolanThe Times-Picayune

Matthew Hinton, The Times-PicayuneSt. Augustine High School

The controversy over corporal punishment at St. Augustine High
School resurfaced Tuesday when several alumni sued a consultant
who advised Archbishop Gregory Aymond that St. Augustine students
had been injured by paddling.

But backers of corporal punishment, who include St. Augustine
administrators, parents and alumni, say it is part of St.
Augustine's formula for success.

In addition, they have said that no one has been hurt by
paddling and that there are no complaints about it from within
the St. Aug community. They also have said they resent the
suggestion that Aymond and others are more competent than they to
decide how the school's students should be disciplined.

The archbishop and the school still have come to no agreement.

Click to enlarge

In late 2009 Aymond asked Monica Applewhite, described as a
educational safety consultant based in Austin, Texas, to look
into discipline at St. Augustine.

As Aymond's representative, Applewhite sat in on St.
Augustine's internal review of its corporal punishment policy.
The review committee elected to continue the policy, with
modifications.

But the lawsuit says that Applewhite privately advised Aymond
that she learned during her inquiry that parents had taken three
students to the hospital after paddling, and that others had been
paddled "day after day and more than 5 or 6 times a
day."

"I believe stakeholders would be far more reasonable
about needed modifications if they knew the truth," she told
Aymond.

The lawsuit says Applewhite's allegation of injuries was news
to the other committee members.

That allegation went not only to Aymond but also to the
leadership of the Josephites, the religious order that founded
St. Augustine. St. Augustine officials said they saw the
allegation for the first time when Aymond shared it with them in
a March 31 meeting.

Applewhite was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

In the lawsuit, the St. Augustine Alumni Association, with
alumni Warren Johnson, Percy Marchand and Byron Williams Sr.
listed, said Applewhite's report to Aymond was untrue.

They said they have reviewed records of all the meetings
Applewhite and other members of the review committee had with
parents, and have found no record of complaints about
hospitalizations.

They said no hospitals reported suspicious injuries to police,
as they would be required to do under state law.

The alumni asked the court, among other things, to declare
Applewhite's claims false.

Aymond and the St. Aug advocates apparently have had no
additional meetings since March 31.

On orders from the school's Josephite owners, who agree with
Aymond on the paddling issue, St. Augustine operated last year
without corporal punishment as a disciplinary option, over the
objection of local administrators and parents.

School officials have said the issue of whether paddling will
be in effect during the 2011-12 school year has to be settled
soon, so it can be incorporated in the summer printing of the
school handbook, which functions as a contract with parents.

A three-minute news segment from local TV station Fox 8 News in New Orleans (3 June 2011), "Paddling controversy heats up". It describes the dispute over the "expert report" which had claimed there had been cases in which students were injured by paddling. The school says this statement is wrong and demands of the Archbishop that it be retracted. Parents are interviewed who say they were misrepresented in the report.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

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myfox8.com (WGHP-TV), High Point, North Carolina, 22 June 2011

Corporal Punishment Option Upheld in Randolph Co. Schools

RANDOLPH COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) -- A corporal punishment policy
will stay on the books in Randolph County Schools.

All but one member of the Randolph County school board voted
in favor Tuesday of keeping a policy that gives school personnel
an option for using corporal punishment.

The policy requires school leaders to get parental permission
before using corporal punishment on a child, and there has to be
a witness in the room when it happens.

Supt. Don Andrews said he is in favor of the policy in the way
it is written.

"Kids are different. Corporal punishment for one child
may be a real deterrent to inappropriate behavior, whereas for
another child it may not be a deterrent. You'd have to talk to
parents about that because every child is different,"
Andrews said.

The board member who voted against the policy said there were
no studies that showed corporal punishment was more effective
than other forms of punishment.

A bill that would give parents the option to completely opt
out of the policy is awaiting Gov. Bev Perdue's signature.

Gaston Gazette, North Carolina, 22 June 2011

Gaston County Schools puts down the paddle

By Amanda Memrick

Click to enlarge

Paddling as punishment won't be permitted at Gaston County
Schools next year.

The Board of Education voted Monday night to prohibit corporal
punishment, dropping the number of North Carolina school
districts that allow the controversial form of discipline from 18
to 17 districts.

Principals and administrators told school leaders that
corporal punishment was no longer needed or used so it wasn't
necessary to have it on the books as a form of punishment, said
Board Chairman Mark Upchurch.

"That's more positive for the students out there. You
just don't know what kind of home life they have, and you want to
make school a positive place for them," Upchurch said.
"We don't want it to be a negative place."

Gaston County Schools students were paddled 14 times during
the last school year, according to district data. Paddling was
used most often on kindergartners, who were paddled seven times.
Second-graders were paddled four times. A first-grader,
third-grader and seventh-grader were each paddled once last
school year.

Other options

"I've never used it as an administrator," said North
Belmont Elementary Principal Chris Germain. "I don't think
it's my style to punish children that way. As a dad, I don't do
that at home."

As a principal, he said he wouldn't want to do that to someone
else's child.

North Belmont's first step is to inform parents when their
child misbehaves.

The school focuses on rewards-based programs that encourage
good behavior. Alternate methods like putting a student in
another classroom, using the in-school suspension room, referrals
to guidance counselors and working on self-esteem issues are used
in place of paddling.

No parents have asked Germain to paddle their child, though he
did have one parent spank a child in the bathroom. Germain
informed the parent that spanking wasn't allowed in the school.

North Carolina is one of 19 states that allow corporal
punishment, according to Action for Children North Carolina.

Schools weren't required to report corporal punishment until
this school year, said Tom Vitaglione, senior fellow with Action
for Children North Carolina.

Legislators recently passed a law that required schools to
give parents the choice to allow or forbid corporal punishment.

"I think in the last three years about 20 school
districts have banned corporal punishment," Vitaglione said.
"There are many that allow it but really haven't used it in
years."

Lincoln County is one of those counties that still allows
corporal punishment but hasn't used it, Vitaglione said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools eliminated corporal punishment
in 1991.

Cleveland County got rid of the practice in 2009.

Research in the last two decades has shown that corporal
punishment doesn't help with behavior or attendance and could
cause problems when it comes to confidence, attitudes about
school and relating to teachers, Vitaglione said.

The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, 28 June 2011

Josephites' new leader disavows interview, says paddling must
end at St. Augustine High School

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune

Ted Jackson, The Times-PicayuneA suit of armor stands guard in the entrance of St. Augustine High School next to a flag emblazoned with the Josephites seal.

The new superior general of the Josephites on Monday disavowed
remarks attributed to him and published over the weekend that
seemed to open the door to a reconsideration of corporal
punishment at St. Augustine High School.

In an interview Monday, the Rev. William Norvel said the issue
is closed: Paddling is dead.

He pointed to a written statement issued June 21 saying the
administration of the Josephites "affirms the decision of
the previous administration in July 2010 to end the practice of
corporal punishment."

The weekend editions of the archdiocesan newspaper, the
Clarion Herald, contained the first interview with Norvel since
his election to the order's top post, in which he said he planned
to listen "to both sides of the issue" before coming to
a decision.

In the Clarion Herald interview, Norvel described meetings
that he had either held or scheduled with various figures on each
side of the dispute. Because of the need for extensive
fact-gathering, he declined to say when he hoped to make a
decision. He also compared his new role to an earlier experience
in a divided parish in which he listened at great length before
resolving a dispute.

The Clarion Herald said that interview was conducted June 17,
three days after Norvel was elected superior general. Four days
after the interview, the Josephite administration issued its
unambiguous "no-corporal punishment" statement. But
because of its print deadlines, Norvel's Clarion Herald remarks
did not appear until this weekend.

The Rev. William Norvel, newly-elected head of the Josephite order

Norvel, in a brief interview Monday, said he wanted to say
nothing more than what was contained in the Josephites' written
statement. Asked about the Clarion Herald story, he said it was
"completely wrong."

Editor Peter Finney Jr., who conducted the interview and said
he retains extensive notes from their conversation, said "I
stand by the story."

Norvel and St. Augustine's local board of directors, which
favors keeping some limited form of St. Augustine's 60-year
tradition of paddling, are scheduled to meet for the first time
by telephone conference call today, board chairman Troy Henry has
said.

The months-long controversy involving St. Augustine, one of
the region's most celebrated schools, is nominally over paddling,
but more deeply touches on themes of school autonomy, Catholic
identity, and racial respect between the predominantly white
educational community and African-American alumni, parents and
educators at St. Augustine.

Click to enlarge

Norvel, 76, also told the Clarion Herald he did not seek the
job of superior general when the Baltimore-based order of about
80 priests gathered in mid-June in Washington to elect new
leaders.

He said before the election his name was not in the running
for the leadership post.

The 140-year-old order, born out of a British missionary
society, was created to minister to newly freed slaves. Norvel
becomes its first African-American superior general.